Hunting can be a fun, challenging and frustrating experience, overall it’s an emotional roller coaster, but there are those times when things happen so perfectly it is almost as if it were scripted.
Before we began baiting we fixed up our stand, it is a huge platform tucked away in the branches of the trees, with a full camo skirt around it to hide any movement. We then set up our bait barrel 25 yards from the stand; we would be bow hunting the bears. With the tree stand set up we were ready to bait.
Paul and I began baiting our bear back in August with donuts and grease (thanks to a friendly little tip from a very good friend). Once September rolled around we were also able to use reminisces of our geese carcasses after they were cleaned, which the bears seemed to love.
Our bait was active and our trail cam was set, there two bears coming in and they were complete opposites. One a small guy that could fit on top of the bait barrel…
… And another that was as tall as the barrel itself.
Now there were two bears, two hunters and a very important decision to make. I decided that I would rather see Paul kill the big bear and I would be the camera operator.
When bear season opened up we were in the stand right away; excited to see all our hard work pay off. The first afternoon it just didn’t come together’ we saw nothing; the bears were coming in at night instead of in the day time. The hunt continued on like this for the first week of the season, however the bears were slowly changing their feeding time, getting earlier and earlier, and then one day we checked the trail cam and he had come in at 6:55 at this time it was still light out until 7:30, we were closing in on our bear.
Unfortunately the bear would have to wait another night, we had a family wedding to attend, the next day it was rainy, windy, cold and all around miserable, we debated not going out at all but as they say “you can’t kill a bear from your living room” so off we went back in our stand. The rain subsided but the wind continued, and we were as relentless as the weather, we refused to give in. All of a sudden the wind came to a dead stop, the neighbours dogs started barking, a skunk came in, and the whole atmosphere changed, I slowly tilted my head and my eyes met Paul’s, our expressions said everything. We could both feel it this was our night. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Paul got into position and stood ready to draw. It was only a matter of minutes and the bear appeared out of nowhere.
We were face to face with a giant black bear, he was amazing, my heart started racing, Paul drew back and let his arrow fly, right behind the shoulder a perfect shot. Neither of us could control our excitement, we had built our stand, baited our own bear and now took him with a bow. I immediately started to climb down from the stand to find our bear; Paul however was more cautious, the light faded quickly and we had other bears coming to our bait, we knew our bear was down but did not want to run the risk of coming across another bear in the dark with only a bow.
We would wait till morning, neither of us really slept that night, so at 4:30 we jumped out of bed, got a coffee, drove to our stand and waited till light. As soon as we could see into the forest we started following our bears trail, he was a mere 65 yards from our stand in some thick bush. Our excitement levels increased even further, Paul had his first black bear kill and it was with a bow.
I quickly began to clean the carcass and when I hauled out the insides we realized it was a double lung shot, it was a perfect shot and a very nice bear. Once the bear was cleaned we dragged him out to the truck and off to the butcher the meat went. The rest of him went straight to Advanced where James wasted no time in getting us a wet score back, turns out it was 17 ½ which makes it an Ontario archery record black bear.
